


A Different Debrief

by howardently



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 13:31:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3490040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howardently/pseuds/howardently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie and Finn talk after the disabled toilet disaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Well, if it isn’t the Disabled Toilet Sex King of Stamford College!” Archie chortles as Finn enters the chippy, standing to give him an elaborate jokey bow.

Finn groans, lifting his bag over his head and slinging it into one of the plastic chairs. It bounces off the wall and lands on the floor, but he’s busy scowling at Archie and doesn’t notice.

“God. Not you too. It’s pretty much all over school already, isn’t it?” He drops into the chair with a thud, puts his forehead in his hands. Rae had been right when she’d said everyone would think they’d been fucking. It’s all he’s heard all afternoon. He would mind less if they actually had been fucking, but it seems like they’re just going to dance around it indefinitely. Forever.

“You’re pretty cranky for someone who just got laid… at college no less.” Archie laughs and shoves at his elbow, and Finn’s head drops sickeningly towards the table for a moment.

“It’s not really funny, Arch. I think Rae is totally freakin’ out.” Finn lifts his head to glare dejectedly at this best mate. “And I didn’t get laid.”

“What do you mean, Rae’s freaking out?” Archie adjusts his glasses to look at him better, and Finn sits up straighter in his chair. The server drops off a pair of soft drinks and an order of chips and Archie picks one up and shoves it in his mouth.

“I dunno, mate. It were crazy. You know she’s been avoidin’ me at college, right?”

Finn swirls a chip around and around in the pile of ketchup dampening the paper sleeve the chips came on. The chip starts to mush up a little and he tosses it back on the pile in disgust. Stupid bloody chips can’t even stay together for ten bloody seconds. When lifts his gaze from the pulpy mess, Archie’s brow is furrowed and his lips are pursed.

“What do you mean, avoiding you?” He asks, chewing absently on his straw. Finn huffs a sigh in response. Trust Archie to always need every detail. It was awfully tedious having a best mate who was so keen to know everything.

“Well, like, ever since our exclusive sleepover, I haven’t seen tops nor tails of her for days. And she doesn’t call me back when I ring. It’s fuckin’ exhausting chasin’ after her, mate.”

Archie considers this for a few seconds, slowly chewing and taking a sip of soda. Finn feels intensely frustrated and considers heading home to hang over the bed and listen to Radiohead, but his dejection is just enough to keep him pinned to his chair.

“Well, what happened at your sleepover?” Archie asks, and his eyes are curious and thoughtful behind his glasses. Finn groans. He’s going to have to recount the whole fucking thing, and then the whole other fucking thing, before his best mate will just agree that Rae’s acting weird and girls are impossible.

“Well, we was just hangin’ out, listening to records and whatever, and she brought this bottle of vodka and she just kept givin’ me drink even when I said I didn’t want none, and well… I got a bit drunk and passed out in me bed. And when I woke up the next morning she were gone.”

Finn glares down at the table. It’d gone so much worse than he’d planned. Every time he thought about it, he felt like he might get sick. He had envisioned lying on the floor and listening to music with her for hours. Music was always best when he was lying on the floor, and it was one of his dearest fantasies to sprawl on his back next to her and trace words on her thigh and bullshit with her about what album was best, which lead singer had the best stage presence, what lyrics were the most powerful since, well, almost since the very beginning. Music was their common ground, their shared language, and he wanted desperately to have one of those nights where the music was the bridge between them, allowing them to finally fully connect.

And he’d planned for some heated snogging, at the very least. He’d play Mazzy Star and things would slow down and he’d finally get his hands on her tits. God, he wanted to get his hands on her tits.

Archie is watching as he mourns the loss of the perfect sleepover in his head, and Finn sucks his lip and grimaces a little.

“And what else? There has to be more to that then you’re telling me.”

“Jesus, Arch.” Finn grumbles, but he knows Archie’s right. It wasn’t just the drinking that made the night end so shit. “I dunno. We were looking at pictures and she asked about me mum. If I missed her.”

“What did you say?” This has caught Archie’s attention, he’s hunched over the table now, all gangly arms sprawled on the tabletop. They hardly ever talk about Finn’s mum. Finn had stayed with Archie for a while after she left while his Dad got his shit together, and Archie knew how hard it’d been for Finn. He was there for those first few sleepless weeks, there for the choosing and decorating of Finn’s room in the new, smaller house, there for the year before his Dad sent him to boxing when he punched anyone who looked at him cross. Archie was intimately familiar with the ways Finn missed his mum, but he never really asked Finn about it. He was a good mate that way.

“I just said yeah.” Finn replies, shrugging to indicate how inadequate of a response he knew that was. Archie hums and leans back a little. “Then she found a picture of me and Stacey.”

“Ugh. I can imagine that went over well.” Archie tilts his chair back at an angle and looks at the ceiling, swinging an arm out to make Finn continue.

“It wasn’t that bad, really. She just asked who it was and how I knew her. I told her I hadn’t looked at those pictures in ages and that I’d throw it away, but she said it was fine, that everybody had exes.”

Archies chair slams back onto the tile with a dull thud, and Finn discovers his friend is scowling and red-faced. He’s confused. Why would this bother Archie? Archie had never liked Stacey. No one had really ever liked Stacey, not even Finn. But after enough people tell you that you should be with someone, you just do it to see what the fuss is about. They’d dated for less than a month, and it was a horrid, tempestuous month at that. The breakup was bad enough that Finn vowed to himself that he’d never let anyone else tell him who to like again.

But that wasn’t what was making Archie smash the rest of Finn’s mauled chip into the basket.

“What?”

“It’s just… I’m Rae’s ex, you know?” Archie frowns at the potato crushed onto his fingertips. “I was such a twat to her. I hope she doesn’t think about me the way you do about Stacey.”

Finn swallows. He hates thinking about Rae and Archie together. He knows Archie is mostly gay, and that his going out with Rae was a one-off, but that almost makes him hate it more. He hates that Archie would use Rae, his Rae, that way. And he knows Rae got hurt by it. He’ll never forget the look on her face, the anguish in her eyes, when he told her that Archie wasn’t coming that day. He makes himself remember that moment when he gets frustrated with her. She’s just a girl who got hurt by somebody. Just like he got hurt. He’s got to be patient with her.

And he knows that she’s long since forgiven Arch. She’s such a good person, and she’s so fucking loyal and forgiving, and even though he was a total dickhead to her, she and Archie are on better terms than ever. She’s just cool that way.

“You know she doesn’t mate. She loves you.” Finn reassures through gritted teeth. He wishes he knew Rae loved him the way he knows she loves Archie. He knows she likes him, but it’s hard to really know what she’s thinking. He’s never before been the one to like the girl more than she likes him. It’s deeply unsettling.

Archie smiles a bit and visibly shrugs off his funk. “So, what happened after the Stacey thing?”

“Dunno. I just kissed her a bit, and then she kept pourin’ drinks until I were totally pissed.” He’s confused. What else would happen? The Stacey thing wasn’t a big deal. Was it? Rae seemed so totally unaffected at the time, aside from her lovely eyes growing even bigger, but in retrospect, she had cut off the kissing awfully quickly.

“Hmmm.” Archie is visibly pondering and it’s pissing Finn off. It’s just like Arch to make a meal out of every little thing, second guess everything that Finn barely first guessed. That hmmm is everything he hates in the world right now encapsulated in a single noise.

“What?” Finn snarls, eyes pinched to show his disdain. “You think Rae was upset about Stacey? It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Yeah, maybe, mate.” Archie shrugs his shoulders, all nonchalant. Of course he’s nonchalant, it’s not his girlfriend they’re discussing. “But, like, you know Rae.”

Finn stares blankly across the table at his friend. There are so many things wrong with that ridiculous statement that he doesn’t even know where to begin. He can’t even unpack that useless sentence enough to roll his eyes at Archie. What the fuck? Of course he knows Rae. He’s her boyfriend. He’s supposed to know Rae better than any of them, except maybe Chloe. And, at the same time, he doesn’t know Rae at all. If he did, he wouldn’t need to suffer through this painfully tedious conversation to figure out what the hell is going on with her.

“I’ve got no idea what you mean, Arch.” He’s rolled through all the possible responses in his head and decided that this one is the safest bet. Ask for more information. Be patient, get the whole story. Do not smash Archie’s stupid ambiguous face into the table.

“Well, I just mean that Rae is… she doesn’t really think the best of herself, you know. She’s got a messed up idea of herself.”

“I know that.” Finn jumps in, pleased to be back in territory he understands, but Archie cuts him off.

“So, it had to be kind of a shock to the system that you went out with Stacey Stringfellow, the fittest and most popular girl in second year.”

“Yeah, but Stacey’s horrible. Doesn’t matter if she’s fit as Britney fuckin’ Spears, she’s a total twat. And, that’s like ancient history. It’s Rae that I want.” Finn’s hands are splayed out in front of him, and he’s shaking his head. Who gives a shit about Stacey? Stacey should not be affecting what he’s got going on with Rae.

“Did you tell Rae that?” Archie answers, smug in knowing that he’s got Finn there. Bastard. Always knowing everything and being right all the fucking time. Finn puffs up his cheeks and blows out a big gust of air, which somehow ends up as a sigh. What, is he just supposed to go around telling Rae he wants her all the time? Of course he wants her. He keeps kissing her, doesn’t he? Keeps inviting her round for exclusive sleepovers. Of course he wants her.

A terrifying thought occurs to Finn suddenly. What if she thinks he only wants her for sex? He does keep kissing her and inviting her for exclusive sleepovers. Maybe she thinks he just wants to sleep with her and she keeps putting it off to try and prolong things? Like, she did shut him down in the caravan right quick. And when he started kissing her the other night, she stopped him and starting making him drink. Was she trying to get him drunk so that they couldn’t actually do it? Was he accidentally pressuring his girlfriend into sleeping with him, so much that she was coming up with ways to rebuff him? Or did she not want him at all? Maybe she just didn’t want to have sex, maybe she wasn’t attracted to him. But no, she did seem affected when they kissed. And that time he’d made her come… well, he wasn’t imagining that. Her little pout when he’d had to go… that had been a part of his fantasies nearly every day since then. She wanted him, he was sure. It must be that she doesn’t have any idea how much he fancies her.

“Arch, you don’t think…” He swallowed heavily. “Do ya think she thinks I only want her for sex? She knows, right? She knows that I… that I…”

Archie waits for him to finish, but Finn finds himself unable to come up with the words. He doesn’t even know what the end of that sentence is, how is Rae supposed to know?

He wants her, definitely. He’s never had the experience of wanting someone this way, of not being able to pull a girl the moment he thinks about getting into her knickers. He hasn’t wanked with this frequency since he was thirteen and just discovering the fun of his willy. He thinks about it constantly. Constantly constantly. And it’s not that he just wants to get in her pants, even, but he wants to touch her, explore her, find out the places where her skin turns pink and the things that make her moan involuntarily. And her tits. He just wants to see her tits more than anything. More than he’d wanted to see Oasis at Knebworth.

But it’s more than that. He’s crazy for her. He thinks about her laugh all the time. What things he could say to elicit that little giggle she’s got, or how to make her give that great booming chuckle. And he thinks about what she’ll say about stuff. It’s ridiculous, really. He annoys himself with how much he imagines what she’ll say about a song, or about Chloe’s new conquest, or about the idiot Spanish teacher’s horrid accent. He spends more time wondering what Rae’ll say than he does forming his own opinions. He just finds her fascinating. He’s never sure which way her mind will turn, what leaps she’s making.

He wants to be around her all the time. She’s got this way of making a room feel different, of somehow altering the very air in whatever place she occupies. He can almost tell where she’s been just by the atmosphere. Which makes her avoidance of him even worse, when he can sense her around corners and in the empty spaces she leaves behind.

And she makes him nervous. Stupidly, idiotically lovesick nervous. It’s fucking awful.

So, maybe yeah, he fucking loves her. Of course he loves her.

Oh God, he totally loves her.

Archie is watching him process through all of this like it’s a fuckin’ movie or summat. He’s leaning over with his elbows on the table, grinning that stupid smug smirk that he has. Finn can feel his mouth working, gaping open and shut like a trout and it’s just one more thing he can’t stand about this situation. He fucking loves Rae, and she asked him why this morning and he’d yelled at her and he’s probably gone and fucked everything up and he fucking loves her. And Archie just sits there all superior and knowing and he doesn’t even have the right because he wasn’t properly affected by the gloriousness that is Rae’s chest.

Finn slumps in his chair and hangs his head over the back, shaking his head at the ceiling. At this point, Archie clearly takes pity on him and picks the conversation back up.

“I’m sure she doesn’t think that, Finn. I’m sure she knows you… care… about her.” It takes an extraordinary amount of willpower not to groan at the emphasis Archie places on the word ‘care.’ Finn knows his best mate is just trying to call him out on his bullshit, trying to help him figure out what he’s doing wrong, but… it’s just more than he can handle at the moment. He loves this girl and he’s screwing it up and he’s gonna lose her…

And he abruptly remembers Chloe and Izzy discussing in overly loud whispers how Archie had fingered Rae eight times. He’s only fingered her once. Her and Archie only went on one date and he fingered her eight times? It’s probably bullshit. What would Archie know about fingering a girl? But still.

Finn gives into the groan and drops his head into his arms on the table. He’s very aware that he’s being a melodramatic twat, but it’s just all too much. Archie reaches over and pats his shoulder clumsily. Finn raises his head to look at his friend, and Archie laughs a bit at his expression.

“So what happened today, then? If it wasn’t fucking in the disabled toilet?” Archie waggles his eyebrows comically, and Finn sits up in his chair. He does need help with this part. He is utterly bewildered by what happened today, and he’ll take whatever advice he can get. Even if it means tolerating Archie’s self-satisfied superior knowledge of his girlfriend.

“Okay, so I finally ran into her at college today. For the first time in weeks. And she just… Ugh. She said she ‘didn’t want to do this here’ and then she pulled me into the disabled toilet.” He lets his bewilderment show clearly on his face. What was that? “What didn’t she want to do, Arch? You don’t think she were gonna break up with me?”

Archie’s brow furrows, and he opens his mouth to reply, but Finn finds himself barreling over his friend’s words. He’s started talking and it’s just all pouring out. It’s always been this way with Archie. Something about him just opens the floodgates in Finn’s head, and it all comes out in a barely coherent gush.

“So, I tell her she’s a dickhead for ignorin’ me, call her out on it, and she can’t even deny it, mate. Like, she didn’t even try. She’s been ignorin’ and avoidin’ me and it’s been drivin’ me fuckin’ nuts. She just starts saying she’s not a dickhead, but she is, and I tell her that, and then I asked her if she were mad at me about the other night, thinkin’ like that she’s mad that we didn’t get to… you know… but it were her fault cause she kept giving me drink. And like, yeah, maybe some o’ that were my fault, but I didn’t think about that then. Then she says that’s not it. And then she starts in about how I’m an eleven and she’s a four, and mate… it’s just daft. What does that even mean? I’ve got no idea. And then she says that I should be goin’ out with someone like Stacey! Fuckin’ Stacey! And that people must be thinking that I’m mad ‘goin’ out with that.’ That’s what she said, Arch. ‘Goin’ out with that.’”

Finn shakes his head in disbelief and throws his hands in the air. He still can’t believe she’d talk about herself that way. His stomach clenches just thinking about it, and he feels that same frustration and burning anger he’d felt that morning. She’s so wonderful and so lovely, and it’s so maddening that she can’t see that. And that she’s so worried about what other people think.

Archie is back to splaying over the table again, as if he’s trying to physically insert himself into the memory. He’s lost his know-it-all expression and he’s now mostly just looking worried, really worried. Finn is suddenly concerned that the situation is even worse than he’d thought before. He hasn’t even gotten to the bad parts yet, the parts where he’d yelled at her and wouldn’t tell her why he liked her, and already Archie has on his ‘it’s-really-bad-mate’ face, the one he saves for when he really has to let Finn know his wrongdoings.

“What happened then?” Archie asks, pushing his glasses back and frowning. “What did you say?”

“Well, I…” Finn falters now, because Archie’s reaction has unsettled him. “I asked her ‘that what?’ But, I dunno, Arch, I’d gotten a bit mad at this point and I kinda yelled it. But, I mean, why would she say that? What did she mean? How could she say that about herself? She’s so…”

He swallows and looks down at the table for a minute. He loves this girl, and he’s got no idea what’s going on in her head, and he needs another opinion. He needs some help, and he’s gotta tell Archie the rest.

“So I were a bit heated, and I told her that nobody gets to tell me who I fancy. That’s mine, you know? Nobody gets to control who anyone likes, nobody else gets a say so in that, right? It were other people tellin’ me who to like that got me with Stacey, and you know how fuckin’ awful that were. And nobody gets to tell you who you can fancy, right Arch?”

This is the closet Finn has ever come to telling his best mate that he knows he’s gay. It’s the best way he knows how to tell Archie that it’s fine, that it’s nobody’s business but his. He doesn’t know how to really say it, but he knows this is a sentiment Archie will understand- nobody gets to tell you who to fancy, that belongs to you alone. And they sit there for a minute with the words between them, just letting them resonate in their friendship, until finally Archie nods.

“Yeah, I get that. Then what?” He asks, and his eyes are just a bit glassy and there’s a new kind of unspoken communication between the two of them. But Finn knows what it’s like to want to change the topic, knows how uncomfortable it is when the dynamic changes, so he plows ahead in his story.

“Then she asked me why I liked her. And I said I just do. You know? Like, I just like her mate. I like everythin’ about her. She’s… I just like her. I can’t put it into words. And then I asked her if she were done bein’ a dickhead, like I like her and she knows I like her and we can just carry on, yeah? But then she stared yellin’ about me being the dickhead and I didn’t know what to say so I jus’ kissed her. It’s like I can’t figure the words, so if I just kiss her, she’ll know what I mean. And then we were fine, right, but then we realized we were stuck and she started freakin’ out.”

“What do you mean, freaking out?” Archie’s face is somber and Finn feels a sliver of trepidation slide down his spine. It’s definitely worse than he thought it was. And he’d already thought it was pretty shit.

“Well, she started goin’ on about how people would know we were in there together. But, like who cares, right? And she started gabbing about people thinkin’ we was fuckin’ because of the handles or summat, which is just… I mean, we’re not fucking. I’d like to be fuckin’, but we’re not. Not fucking, so. I started bangin’ so somebody would let us out, and she’s just like mutterin’ about how this isn’t happening or summat, and then when the caretaker opened the door, she just took off and I called after her, but she was gone and I haven’t seen her since.”

The speed of his speech slows as he winds down the story, until the last words slide out. They sit there for a minute, both pondering how upset Rae is. Finn scratches at his knuckles and agonizes over whether she was going to break up with him, whether this will finally push her over the edge. He feels like he’s constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop with her, for her to figure out that he’s not worth angsting over and leave him. She’s so vibrant, and he’s so dull. He’s been trying so hard, but she’s impossible to figure out and he’s pretty sure it’s not enough.

“Fuck.” Archie says, and it’s long and drawn out. Finn just nods. Fuck is the appropriate sentiment.

Finn lifts his eyes from the table so he can see what Archie’s thinking, but he keeps his head tilted down under the weight of his trepidation. Archie is shaking his head and grinding the smashed chip into the basket with his forefinger, and his cheeks are weirdly flushed.

“Well…” Archie tucks his hands under the table and leans his torso forward, and Finn recognizes the position. It’s the truth-telling position. Finn has a thousand memories of Archie hiding his hands away and leaning forward like this just before explaining uncomfortable things. When Finn started first started shaving, Archie had leaned forward and told him that he’d fucked up his face. When Tanya Bishop had been caught snogging Danny Trayborne behind the big tree at fourteen, it’d been Archie tilting into his space to tell him his girlfriend was a slag. When he’d started coming to the chippy straight after footy without showering, Archie’d angled himself just like this to tell him he stank. Finn swallowed and braced himself. It’d probably be uncomfortable, but it’d be the truth and it might just help him hang on to Rae.

“This might be my fault a bit.” He says, and Finn watches as one of Archie’s eyebrows climbs up his forehead and his cheek lifts. “I sort of told Rae that it was best at college to just… kind of stay under the radar.”

Archie is shooting him an apologetic grimace, but Finn isn’t making the connection between what happened in the disabled toilet and staying under the radar. Staying under the radar wasn’t bad advice, Finn tried his best to stay out of the spotlight at school too. Archie frowns at Finn’s bewildered expression and tries to explain.

“Well, mate, you’re… they call you the fittest lad at college.” Archie shrugs and gives him an exaggerated wince. “You’re on everyone’s radar. So that might be why she’s been avoiding you a bit?”

“You told my girlfriend to stay away from me at college?” Finn is mostly bewildered, but he can hear the anger leaking though his voice. “So she could stay under the fuckin” radar?”

He feels himself start to seethe, knows his neck is getting red again. He locks eyes with his best mate, and his gaze is direct and challenging. His jaw is clenched and he vaguely recognizes that he’s grinding his teeth. Finn forces himself to unclench his hands and lies them flat on the table slowly. He can’t believe Archie told Rae to keep away from him. Archie is the one person who knows, really knows how Finn feels about Rae. He’s the one who recognized Finn’s pining before even he had. He’s his best mate and Archie knows how crazy he is about Rae and how hard he’s trying to hang on to her- how could he advise that she keep away from him? Finn feels deeply betrayed.

“No, no no…” Archie is quick to interject. “I didn’t tell her to keep away from you! I didn’t! I wouldn’t do that to you, mate!”

Finn takes a couple of deep breaths to get his anger to dissipate. He can trust Arch, he wouldn’t do that. He gathers his thoughts, trying to decide what to say next, but Archie’s continuing before he can choose his words.

“But, can’t you see why she would? Avoid you at school, I mean? People are gonna talk about you two. We know Rae, we know she’s brilliant, but you know how people are. Most people only see what’s on the outside. How else would a grumpy sod like you be so popular?” Archie tries to soften it with a joke, but Finn fails to see how any of this is funny.

Archie is saying the same things Rae was saying earlier. That people were gonna talk about why he was with her. But to him, it’s just the opposite. Rae knows him, knows him beyond the moody exterior and air of mystery he cultivates with lots of smoking and few words. She knows him, and she still wants to be with him, and he can’t figure out why she wants him. She’s so much, so vivacious and brash and compelling, and he’s… just not. He’s working so hard all the time to seem cool, and she just is cool without any effort at all. It’s infuriating and fascinating and confusing, and he just so desperately wants to know what she’s thinking, what it’s like in her head. So this notion that the world will find a discrepancy in her worth in regards to his makes sense, but it’s just all skewed. She’s too good for him, not the other way around.

Finn is scowling, languishing in despondency as his friend reiterates Rae’s argument from the morning. He huffs a sigh and raises sad eyes to his friend.

“And when she said she was a four and you was an eleven, she’s talking about that bollocks scale of attractiveness, Finn. Like 1-10 how fit someone is.” Archie’s face is all sympathy and Finn’s never wanted to punch him more, not even when he broke Rae’s heart back at the beginning of the summer.

“Are you sayin’ that Rae is a four?” Finn asks, and his voice is low and dangerous. Archie’s eyes widen in fear and he scrambles to explain, waving his hands in front of him as if to fend off Finn’s words.

“No! No, I was saying that’s what Rae said she was. Not me. I didn’t say she was a four. But, hey, she thinks you’re an eleven, mate. That’s encouraging, right?” He chuckles weakly and shoots Finn a forced grin, but once again Finn find’s this less than heartening.

She thinks he’s off the scale, and he couldn’t even tell her one reason he liked her, couldn’t give her any inkling that she’s better than a four. Oh God, he’s fucked this up. His incredible girl, who he fucking loves, is going around thinking she’s a four and he’s done absolutely nothing to make it better. He’s let her think this about herself. And called her a dickhead and just kissed her to make it better.

He’s so woefully inadequate to deserve Rae.

“So, when she was freaking out about people knowing we was in there together, it’s because she didn’t want people to know we’re dating… cause then she couldn’t escape notice… because of me.”

“And cause people will take the piss out of you both… cause she doesn’t look like Stacey.” Archie nods sadly and takes a long sip of his drink. “And, mind you, I don’t know this for sure, but I think she used to get picked on a lot in school. Chloe said summat, and… well, I think it might have caused some of her… issues. Before.”

Finn groans and puts his head in his hands. He’s such a fucking twat. Of course. Of course that’s what this is about. He could tell by the look on her face that day with the Green Lane gang that it wasn’t the first time somebody’d said something nasty to her, he knew it probably wasn’t even the first time that they’d said nasty things to her. He should have thought about what it’d mean for her to be the girl who got caught in the disabled toilet with a boy, what it would mean for her to be the girl who fucks around at college. He couldn’t much change that he’d draw the attention of the shitheads in the world by being her boyfriend- he couldn’t just stop being Finn Nelson. She’d have to get used to being Finn Nelson’s girlfriend, but he could have prevented her from being the girl who had sex with Finn Nelson in a bathroom.

And this idea that people mocking her was part of her issues, part of that terrifying before… it makes his throat tighten and his hands ball up again. The very last thing he wants in all the world is to cause problems in her life that might make her want to hurt herself again. He’d rather she break up with him, and the mere thought of losing her makes his heart seize in agony. In the light of all this new information, the situation from this morning suddenly makes a lot more sense, and seems a lot more dire. It’s so much worse than he thought. What is he gonna do to fix this? What can he do?

Finn thinks about all the jokey congratulatory jeers he got in hours since they were in the disabled toilet, all the pats on the back and awed whispers about how he could pull anyone anywhere. He’s been getting comments pretty steadily all day, even from Archie. The gossip about them is heavy at the moment, and it’s been massively irritating, even though most of what he’s heard about himself is positive. He knows he’s had a reputation for being good with girls, and everything he’s heard today has only seemed to add to his legendary status. The lads seem to think he’s some sort of sex wizard, even though he’s only had sex with a couple of girls. And this thing with Rae today has made him even more revered, even more looked up to for his sexual prowess.

But it’s not that way for girls, he knows. Having sex automatically makes them a slag, regardless of how it makes the boys look. And having sex at school, in the loo… He can only imagine what people must be saying about her, what they’d be saying about any girl caught in that situation, let alone one who people already view so poorly. If he’s been getting comments all day, she must be getting it even worse.

“What are people sayin’ about her, Arch? Do you know?” Finn lifts sad eyes to his mate, crosses an arm across his chest to grab his elbow. “The lads are sayin’ all kinds of shit to me, what’s bein’ said about her?”

Archie turns his head and stares off towards the counter, refuses to meet Finn’s eyes, and Finn knows it must be bad. Fuck, this keeps getting worse and worse.

“Uh… I heard Simmy call her…” Archie swallows and his face gets red. “He called her ‘Magic Fanny.’”

“Magic Fanny?” Finn asks quietly, and winces as he hears his voice come out pained and incredulous. Archie leans back in his seat and rubs his thighs uncomfortably.

“Er… Like you’re fit and she’s… well, she’d have to have a magic fanny to get you. That’s just what Simmy said, you know it’s not true. It’s just what he said.”

Finn uncrosses his arms and rubs his hands over his face a couple of times, then rests his chin in his hands with his fingers covering his mouth. His shoulders slump and he shakes his head gently, blowing out a huff.

“Does she know? Did she hear him?” He asks, somehow already knowing the answer. Archie crosses his arms over his chest, raises his shoulders in a defeated shrug and gives a jerky nod.

“Yeah, she heard.” He looks like Finn feels, frustrated and heartbroken and guilty.

Finn rubs his face again, tugs at the hair at his temples and mutters a curse at the table. A strange tension is running through his limbs, a tightness that feels red and buzzy underneath his skin. He’s gotta do something, but he’s got no idea what. He knows that if he leaves it like this, she’ll break up with him by the end of the week. She won’t be able to take the gossip, the horrible taunts, the attacks on her self-esteem- she already thinks so little of herself. She’ll break up with him and disappear again. But what can he do to stop her?

“What do I do, Arch?” He knows he sounds desperate and despondent, and it’s just one more horrible thing in this horrible day. “Should I go curl Simmy up? Do you think that’ll stop it?”

Archie shrugs a little, shakes his head. “I don’t think it’ll matter at this point, mate.”

“She’s gonna break up with me, isn’t she?” Finn kicks the table with the toe of his boot and tries to hold back the burgeoning tears. He can’t look at Archie, can’t stand to look at anything really, so he squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his jaw. That buzzy red feeling has increased in intensity, and now it feels like a hive of angry bees are swarming just beneath the surface of him. He wants to claw right out of his body and slither away into the blackness that pulses just outside the circle of light from the window. Rae is going to break up with him over something fucking Simmy said and he can’t do anything about it. He can’t do anything about it.

Archie touching his hand breaks him out of his bleak thoughts, and Finn raises red-rimmed eyes to his friends face. Archie’s expression behind his glasses is concerned, but less grim than Finn feels it should be. But then again, he isn’t about to lose another woman he loves. He isn’t about to be left behind again the way Finn is.

“Finn, maybe…” Archie begins, and his face is tight and worried. Finn wonders if his face has that desperate deranged look he used to get after his mum left. Finn used to just stare at that strange face in the mirror back then, unable to comprehend that it belonged to him. “Maybe you should just, you know, talk to Rae. Tell her how you feel, that you’re there for her if all this bothers her.”

Finn groans and throws his head back. This is what Archie’s come up with to help the situation? Fucking talking? This is so like him, so fucking like him to suggest the thing that Finn is the worst as a solution. Doesn’t he realize that talking is more likely to cause everything to go downhill faster? Finn’ll just screw it up, stumble over his words, say the wrong thing, make everything worse

“Arch…” Finn shakes his head at his best mate, his jaw working, unable to articulate how inarticulate he is.

“I know, I know, you’re no good at talking.” Archie rolls his eyes and pushes his glasses back. “But didn’t you say that’s one of the best things about Rae? How she’s always on about something?”

Finn nods and tries to prevent the pout that’s niggling at the corners of his mouth. He can tell by the lead in of Archie’s questions that he’s going to be right… again. Archie is right most of the time, cause he’s so bloody smart. It’s one of the best things about him, that he’s always got the answers. Finn knows that no matter what the situation, no matter how badly he’s fucked up, Archie will always come up with some way for him to fix things. It’s also one of the worst things about him, because Archie’s solutions are nearly always things Finn’s going to hate doing. And because he’s just barely on this side of being an insufferable know it all.

“Well, Rae’s a talker, Finn. That’s just how she understands things. So you’re gonna have to tell her with words how you feel, not by just snogging her senseless. That’s the only way she’s really gonna get it.” Archie’s leaned forward again, and his eyebrows are drawn together above the rim of his glasses. “Do you really think she’s gonna break up with you?”

Finn picks at his cuticles underneath the table and shrugs, shaking his head as he studies the tabletop. He wants to hope that she wouldn’t, he wants to believe that this thing they have is stronger than that, but the truth is that he just doesn’t know. He’s just now beginning to understand how much Rae’s got going on in her head all the time, how much subtext is lurking in every phrase. It’s taken painfully recounting this whole thing with Archie for him to realize how much more there was to it than he’d thought. He knows he withholds things by putting his feelings into kisses, but she somehow withholds things even while saying others. So she’s got all this happening just beneath the surface that he’s got no access to, and who knows how close she really is to walking away. He’s got no idea if she feels enough for him to make her hold on through this shitty situation.

“Dunno.” Finn announces finally. “I don’t want her to. I… I love her, mate. I really fuckin’ love her and I don’t want to lose her too.”

Archie smiles sadly at him with half his mouth, somehow looking both concerned and relieved. “I know. So talk to her.”

“Yeah, ok, I will.” Finn smiles back, grateful to have a course of action.

This is why he’d told Archie everything, for this hopeful feeling that’s pressing back the crushing anxiety from just moments before. Yeah, talking was probably going to be uncomfortable, but it’d help him hang on to Rae. And besides, she deserves to have someone tell her how wonderful she is. She deserves to know why he loves her. Fuck, she deserves to know that he loves her. And if he fucked it up too terribly, or if the words just wouldn’t come out, he could write it on her skin. That’d worked last time. Rae is sweet, too; he knows she’ll be nice about it even if he messes up. He can do this- there’s something this time that he can do. Talking to her will work, and she won’t leave.

Archie’s right in this. He’s always right. He has to be right.

“You gotta work it out with Rae, mate.” Archie says, and a grin blooms across his cheeks. “Cause otherwise you’ll be all depressed and I won’t be able to keep calling you the Disabled Toilet Sex King. And I’m really quite attached to it for your new nickname.”

“It’s a shit nickname, Arch.” Finn’s bark of laughter surprises him. Archie is always able to cheer him up, to help him see what he’s done and figure out how to fix it. He’s such a good mate, and Finn knows he’s fucking lucky to have him. “A nickname isn’t supposed to be longer than the actual name.”

“Sure, Finnley…” Archie teases, and his chuckle makes the smile on Finn’s face grow bigger and more crooked.

“Oh, fuck off.” Finn reaches across the table to shove Archie’s elbow like he’d done earlier, and sniggers as Archie lurches and adjusts in his seat.

“Oi! You owe me, Finnley, and I don’t appreciate you pushing me!” Archie jeers through his laughter, and it’s just like they’re kids again, with Archie faking indignation whenever Finn roughhoused with him. Finn just shoves him again.

“Seriously though, mate. Thank you.” Finn says when they settle down again. “I don’t know what I’d do without you always tellin’ me what to do.”

“Fuck everything up, probably.” Archie’s smile is wide and bright, and though he’s joking, Finn can tell that he’s pleased by the remark. “So do what I tell ya and go talk to her then.”

“What, now?” Finn glances over his shoulder at the darkness outside. It’s not that late, but he thought he’d have more time to prepare, to come up with exactly what he’d say. Archie is shaking his head at him ruefully and Finn frowns back at him.

“Yes, now!” Archie demands, gesturing to the door. “The longer you leave it, the harder it’ll get. Just go over there and tell her you love her.”

“But…” Finn begins to protest, but Archie cuts him off.

“Go!”

Finn stands and bends to retrieve his bag, slings it over his shoulder. Then he crosses to the other side of the table to give Archie a one-armed squeeze around the neck. He knows it’s not enough, it can’t possibly express how grateful it is to have friend like Archie, how much it means to him that his mate will sit there and work out what’s going on with Rae for him. But Finn’s always been shit with speaking, and he knows that Archie will get the sentiment from the simple touch; he’s familiar with Finn’s shorthand. Archie reaches up to pat his arm, and Finn ruffles his hair as he pulls away.

“See you later, mate. Thanks for the chips. And… just thanks Arch.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Archie shoves at him and reaches up to fix his mussed hair with a smile. “Get out of here.”

Finn heads for the door, but as he steps out into the moonlit street, he turns to smile again at Archie. Archie’s not looking anymore, back to nibbling at the now cold chips. Finn shakes his head at the ground and allows himself a crooked grin. He can fix this. He can fix this, and it’s thanks to Archie.


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn’t go straight to her house. He tells himself that he’s just stopping at home to drop off his stuff, but mostly he’s just freaked out about this big talk that he’s got to initiate and he wants to stall a little bit. His house is dark when he gets in, his Dad is working late again. Finn reheats some leftovers from the fridge and makes himself a cup of tea. He eats the food quickly, despite the snack with Archie, but he lingers over the tea rehearsing.

First, he’ll apologize for being such a twat. He’s good at apologizing. Ever since his mum left, he’s been quick to apologize for every perceived wrong, and even quicker to find fault in his behavior. He used to sit at the table every afternoon, picking at the lacquer and replaying his day in his head to make sure he hadn’t done anything wrong. Nan was always good about sitting with him in silence, plying him with tea, or talking it out with him if he wanted. He doesn’t do that much anymore, second guess everything. Nowadays he forces himself not to think too hard about his behavior, or he’ll just get weird about it again. So he just smokes a lot and says little, and it works out okay. He doesn’t have to question everything he does, or didn’t before Rae. Since she’s come into his life, he’s back in his seat replaying their interactions in his mind more frequently than he has in years. But obviously not often enough to prevent him from fucking up so much.

So, he’ll start by saying he’s sorry. That’s simple enough. Then he’ll tell her why he likes her, give her some specific reasons. He runs through a bunch in his head, just to make sure he’s got a them at hand, but he’ll just tell her what feels right at the time. With that as a lead in, he’ll tell her he loves her. And she’ll be so happy and she’ll kiss him and say it too, and then they’ll fall into bed together, and he’ll kiss her neck and peel her top off and finally finally get to touch her tits. It’s gonna happen. Tonight.

Finn rinses his dishes in the sink, staring out the kitchen window into the darkness for a while, letting his plans steep within him to their full potency. This is gonna work. Then he goes upstairs and changes his shirt, reapplies his deodorant and cologne. Okay, so he might not get to see her tits tonight. That’s okay. But he still wants to be clean and prepared just in case. So he changes his boxers and his jeans and his socks too. Just in case. It’s going to go well, he’s sure. He’s going to make it go well. It’s just a question of how well. He brushes his teeth, and checks the expiration date on the condom he’s had in his wallet since before the rave. Just in case.

Then he’s back into his boots, pulling on his red flannel jacket as he left his leather one at Rae’s accidentally on purpose. He was sort of hoping she’d wear it out, and it’d be like a symbol to everyone that she’s his girl. It’s old-fashioned and foolish, he knows, but he just thought… Well, that’s especially stupid in light of what he’s discovered tonight.

He’s out the door and down the six blocks to the turn for her street before he’s had time to run through the whole speech one more time, and he curses at his feet, always so anxious to get to her. He forces himself to slow down on the corner, to take the last few streets extra slowly, to draw out these last moments of rehearsal. He knows it’s idiotic to practice all his words, since they’ll probably all fly out of his head the minute he lays eyes on her, but he keeps it up anyway. It might help, and it can’t hurt.

Then he’s on the sidewalk outside her house. He stands there for a long minute, feeling stupid, just staring up at the light coming out of her window. The light over the front door is off, and the windows for the lounge are dim, so the light spilling out of her room is especially enticing. A sudden romantic notion overtakes him, and he decides to scale the wall and climb into her window to surprise her. She’ll be delighted to see him, pleased that he went to the effort to sneak it, flushed with the daring it’ll take. He glances once more at the darkened front stoop, then crosses the small yard to pull at the rain gutter and test its soundness. He decides that it’s firm enough to climb, and heaves himself up the first length.

He’s barely half way up when it becomes clear what a ridiculously idiotic idea this was. The gutter is narrow, and while it’s secured to the wall pretty well, it’s fairly slick with no real toe-holds. He’s monkey-crawling up it, and the seams keep hitting his nuts unpleasantly. He’s sweating through his fresh cologne, and the sweat is making his palms slippery. At two-thirds of the way up, he loses his grip and slides part way down again. He’s cursing like a sailor, trying to keep his voice low, reconsidering the whole idea of showing up her at night to talk to her. Maybe he should just go home and call it a night. Surely it can’t be that bad, right? She’s got at least one more day before she breaks up with him. He can fix it all tomorrow.

But then he remembers Archie’s low ‘fuuuuckk’ and he resolves to climb this fucking gutter to her window if it kills him. And it just might. He’s already ripped open a gash on his finger from a loose screw. He can do it. He smiles to himself as the words remind him of Rae’s cheer at his footy match, “You can score a goal! I know you’re tired, but you can do it!” With her goofy, adorable face in his mind, he scales the last few feet until he’s perched parallel to her window. Which is three feet away from the gutter with nothing in between. Great. Just great. He’s going to have to swing his torso across the space and just hope he catches the sill instead of falling to his death.

Finn takes a deep breath and lets it out in a big gush, just like he does before he goes onto the football field to psyche himself up. He can do this. No big deal. Just death if he doesn’t make it. This isn’t even the hard part, that’ll be actually talking. He can do this. He crawls up another foot, then slowly lets go with one arm, thighs clamping tightly to the gutter. His fingers can just barely catch the sill if he leans all the way over while still holding on, so he should be able to grab it once he lets go completely. Piece of cake. All he has to do is fucking completely let go.

His stomach lurches as he forces his fingers to release, and there’s a sickening moment where he thinks he might not makes it. But he catches himself on the windowsill, his injured finger streaking blood along the paint. He thinks about how he must look to any onlookers below, scrambling to cling to the windowsill with his fingers while his legs are still wrapped around the gutter. Like a right twat, probably. He pulls himself up on his elbows on the sill, considering his next move. The window is fortunately open just a crack, and he can hear music playing on the stereo in her room. He cocks his head and listens, then stares into the curtained room in wonder. She’s listening to The Bends. Rae is in her room right now listening to the album he’s been longing for all afternoon. Jesus, he loves her so fucking much.

He props himself up on his elbows, balancing his legs on the gutter, and uses one hand to slide the window up in its frame. He’s afraid it’s going to be creaky and give him away, but it slides up without too much fuss, if crookedly. He’s probably bumped it off the track, but he can fix it when he’s actually inside the room. The curtains are closed, so he can’t see in, but he imagines her lying in bed and writing in her diary. He grins to himself. This is the moment, she’s going to be so excited to see him climbing in her window all romantic like. Maybe she’ll want to go straight to the snogging and they can just bypass the rest.

Finn is grateful for the boxing lessons that gave him upper arm strength as he lets his legs dangle beneath him. All his muscles pull taught as he hoists himself up onto the windowsill, and he’s relieved when he gets a knee up and the strain is lessened. He congratulates himself on successfully climbing into his girlfriend’s window. And, of course, this is when he loses his balance and tumbles through the curtains into her room with an almighty crash.

Rae screams at the noise, or maybe the sight of a boy falling unexpectedly into her bedroom, and he thinks she jumps up from her bed, but he’s not sure as he’s fallen ass over end into the room and it takes a moment for him to get his bearings.

“Rae!” Linda’s voice is surprisingly loud from downstairs, and Finn winces. “Are you alright? What’s that noise? Should I come up?”

“No, Mum!” Rae yells back in reply, and he’s able to place her as crouching a few feet in front of him. Her head is turned towards the door, but he can see from her profile that her cheeks are bright red. “I’m fine! I just… I fell off the bed! But I’m fine. Don’t come up.”

Rae looks a bit wild when she turns her face to him, her eyes are wide and shining, her cheeks are flushed, and her mouth is opened slightly. Finn grins at the face she’s making, and moves to rub his shoulder where it hit the corner of her nightstand. Rae tracks his movements, and her eyes get somehow even bigger when she sees the blood.

“Are you alright?” She gasps, reaching out to grab his hand and examine it. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m alright.” She shoots him a disbelieving look, and he smiles, enjoying her concern. She’s so close and she smells heavenly, and she looks so worried about him. “I just cut it a bit on a screw on the gutter. You really ought to get that fixed.”

“I’ll get right on that.” Rae replies sarcastically, then reaches for a tissue to press around his finger tenderly. Then she drops his hand abruptly and slaps him across the shoulder, scowling at him.

“Oi! What’d you do that for?” Finn shakes his head and frowns at Rae’s disgruntled expression. Already this isn’t going according to the plan. She’s supposed to be excited to see him, titillated at his romantic escapade to climb through her window, not smacking him and frowning.

“You scared me half to death, you great oaf! What the hell are you doing climbin’ my window?” She stands and offers him a hand. He takes it, but propels himself up with his own strength. He doesn’t need her help to get up, but he’s happy to touch her no matter the circumstance.

“I just wanted to talk to you!”

“And you couldn’t do that by coming in through the door like a normal person?” Rae’s exasperation frustrates him. Couldn’t she ever react the way he thinks she will? She’s supposed to find it romantic, not annoying. How much of the rest of his plan is going to be thwarted be her inability to react properly? He’s embarrassed that he thought it’d be romantic when it so clearly isn’t, so he drops her hand and fiddles with his watch as he comes up with an alternate explanation.

“I dunno. It’s kinda late. I didn’t know if your mum would be mad or summat.” He mumbles towards the carpet as Rae plops herself down on the bed.

“Nah.” Rae sighs, gesturing for him to sit beside her. “She wouldn’t care. She loves you.”

Something about the casual way she says this sets off an explosion inside Finn’s brain. She says it like an offhand remark, like the idea that one of the Earl women loves him isn’t astounding. And all he can think is Do you? The words throb in his head, seeming to reverberate from one side of his skull to the other, echoing endlessly and getting louder and louder. Do you? Do you? Do you? He feels like he’s choking on them. He tries to swallow them, but they keep clawing their way back up his throat. He has to literally bite his tongue and press his lips together to keep the pathetic words from escaping.

He sits heavily beside her and stares down at his hands as he tries to reign himself in. He cannot speak those words. Rae sits quietly beside him and lets him think, just waits for him to talk or not talk. This is one of the things he loves about her- as much as she loves to bang on, she’s equally willing to just sit there in silence until he works up to whatever he has to say. He wishes briefly for a cup of tea to warm up his throat where he’s closed it off.

Eventually he looks up at her, and he imagines he can see a slump in her shoulders and a tilt of her head that hint at the dejection she must be feeling from the difficult day. He remembers then that she’s a real person, too. As much as he’s got her built up in his head, as much as he wants from her, and Lord does he want from her, she’s just a girl too. A girl who had a shit day where he boyfriend couldn’t tell her he loved her and some idiots made fun of her for something she had no control over. And he’s come here to make it better. Her head is down, her face obscured by a curtain of her lovely dark hair. He considers moving it back so he can look at her better, but he thinks that he might lose his courage if he has to see her beautiful expressive eyes, so he leaves it as an ephemeral barrier between them.

“Rae,” he begins, and it feels a bit like diving into the pool at the very beginning of summer when you aren’t sure whether or not the water is going to be painfully cold. “I wanted to talk to you about what happened this morning. I… I’ve been feelin’ a bit bad about it.”

At this remark, she raises her gaze to meet his. Her eyes are wide and sad and red-rimmed, and he feels his heart thump painfully. She looks… defeated and world weary. And suddenly he just knows deep within him that coming here tonight and climbing in her window like an ass was the right thing to do. She’s more than just his girlfriend, she’s just a girl who needs a friend, and she needed him to come here and reassure her that she’s okay, that they’ll be okay. His pre-planned speech falls away, but he knows that whatever he says, he’s just got to let her know that it’ll be okay.

“Whaddya mean?” She replies and looks downs sharply. He wonders if she has as hard of a time saying what she really means as he does, and as hard a time keeping certain things in.

“Well, I wanted to apologize. I didn’t even think about what people’d say seein’ us in there together like that. I didn’t realize how much they’d talk about it. I’m sorry I didn’t at least try to come up with another option.” He doesn’t know how to really get at the heart of what he means, how to explain to her the remorse he feels for adding more fuel to the rumors that would invariably surround her for going out with him. “I fucked up. It didn’t even occur to me that us goin’ out might cause a problem for you at college, I didn’t know you were tryin’ to stay under the radar or whatever.”

“You’ve been talking to Archie.” Rae replies softly without looking at him, and he can’t figure out what her tone means. Is she pleased that Archie’d clued him in? Is she upset that he’d had to discuss it with his mate? He doesn’t want to speculate any further because there are so many disastrous avenues that her thoughts could be taking. He watches as she breathes a low sigh, scans her face for some indication as to what she’s thinking. He mumbles an assent and she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, and it’s almost too frustrating to bear having no idea at what’s happening inside her head.

“Rae, I… I can’t help that people talk about me.” Finn grimaces at himself and clenches his jaw, shrugging helplessly at her. It’s coming out wrong, but he can’t seem to change the trajectory of his words. “I can’t do nothin’ about that, and if we’re together, people will talk about you too. I know you don’t like that, but…”

She makes a sound at the back of her throat, something like a strangled scoff. Finn clamps his lips together, grinds his teeth to hold in the words. This is coming out all wrong, he’s fucking everything up royally. He does not want to tell her that she just has to deal with shit for dating him. He’s trying to tell her he’s sorry for having no idea, trying to tell her that he loves her and she’s amazing and won’t she please hang in there through the barrage of gossip because he won’t be able to handle being without her. But it’s somehow getting all clogged up in his brain, and coming out as this complete and utter shit about her not liking people talking about her. He wishes he could throw a couple of punches at something, that always seems to help this maddening feeling of being utterly out of control.

“Wait, wait, wait!” He exclaims, rising to pace the small bit of floor in front of her bed. He sneaks a glance at her, though his head is angled towards the floor. She’s pulled her neck back and her eyebrows are furrowed, but he can’t think too much about her face or he’ll never be able to say what he means to say. “That’s not what I meant. Let me try again.”

He can’t help but look at her again, can’t help but try and decipher her thoughts from the expression she wears. It’s another thing he loves about her, that her face can hold so many conflicting and fluctuating emotions. He’s spent a fair few hours lying in bed and wondering how long it’d take before he’d see them all and be able to understand them, be able to know that that tick in her left cheek means she’s angry, or that narrowing her eyes like that means she doesn’t believe him. What he wouldn’t give right now to be able to fast-forward in time and gain that knowledge, just so he’d understand this face she’s making right now: pursed lips, lowered brows, flushed cheeks, dark eyes. He wishes he knew what she was thinking.

But no, he has to press on regardless. If he ever wants a chance to understand all her faces, he’s going to have to keep her from breaking up with him right now.

“What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry if I’ve been givin’ you a hard time about ignorin’ me. I didn’t know that it was cause you were tryin’ not to make a fuss at college. I wish you’d just told me that, though. I been going out of my skull worried about you, worried you was gonna break up with me.” Finn bites his lip. Fucking fuck fuck fuck. That slipped out. He did not want her to know how completely petrified he was that she was gonna leave, he wanted to retain some shred of dignity in all this. But it looked like that wasn’t gonna happen. “I’m sorry too that I, I dunno, forced a confrontation at school and all o’ this happened because of it. I’m sorry that all those arseholes at college are talkin’ shit about ya. You know I’ll beat the shit out o’ the lot of ‘em, if that’s what you want.”

Rae rises from the bed and stands in the path that he’s been pacing, moves closer when he doesn’t take the last few steps. She’s within touching distance now, and though he knows it’s a bad idea because he’s still got so much more to say, he can’t help but rest his palm against the side of her neck. She tilts her head to the side, and he’s glad to see that her eyes have warmed a bit.

“Finn, it’s not your fault. None o’ this is your fault. I should have told ya I were… worried about college. It’s just…” She takes a deep breath, and he wants to kiss her so badly to make her feel better. But Archie says words, so he just waits. “I shouldn’t have been avoidin’ ya. I didn’t want to, I just didn’t want you to have to deal with people talkin’ about me, about us bein’ together.”

“I don’t care about that, Rae. I don’t care about people talkin’ about me, it doesn’t bother me except that it’s annoying. But it does bother you.” It really doesn’t bother him that people talk about him, people have been talking about him for years, since his Mum took up with a Venezuelan arsehole and disappeared practically overnight. And he knows that most of what people say is utter crap, anyway, so he doesn’t worry about it. But he knows that she does, and he wants her to know that he’s available to her if she wants to talk about it, or if she wants him to curl someone up.

Rae squeezes her eyes shut, and a tear rolls down her cheek. Finn wipes it away with his thumb, and leans forward to kiss the spot where it’d been. There’s no way he can keep himself from kissing her when she’s crying. He has to kiss her. And fuck all to Archie if he’d say otherwise. Words or no words, he’s gonna kiss Rae when she’s crying, so she knows that he loves her and wants her to be okay. But he stops at just a soft press of his lips on her cheek and pulls back to make space for all the things that are still to say.

“You say that now, but…” Rae shakes her head and steps away. “You don’t have any idea. You’re going to care. When they start sayin’… You’re gonna care.”

She’s got her eyes closed and her head down as if she can’t bear to look at him. Finn wishes he could rise up out of himself and into her, just to let her know how much he means it, just so she’d see that he’d tolerate people saying all kinds of things if it meant he could be with her. Who cares what anyone else thinks, as long as he’s got her?

“No, Rae. It don’t matter.” He stands still, forces his limbs to go loose and his shoulders stay slack.

Rae looks at him then, and her face is incredulous and disbelieving. And angry. He swallows heavily and keeps his eyes fixed on hers though he wants to look away, but he knows his eyebrows are rising and he tries to reign in his expression. He wants to give her room to be upset, to be hurt. He wants to stand there and take her frustration to lessen the burden she has to bear from his spotlight. He doesn’t care, but he can take some of the pressure from her caring. He can take it.

“Can’t you hear people talkin’ about us, Finn? Can’t you see the whispers and the looks? Any time we’re together, people are lookin’ at us, judgin’ us, judging me. They’re sayin’ awful things, Finn. They’re always starin’, always thinking that somethin’ must be wrong with you if you’re going out with me. Don’t you care about that?” Rae’s face is pinched, her brows drawn, her beautiful eyes wide with fear and edging towards panic. It’s similar to the look she gave him this morning, but worse somehow. He hates that she’s so upset, hates that she feels this way.

“I don’t care about that, Rae. I only care about you.” He takes a step towards her, but she shakes her head in disbelief, rakes her fingers through her hair in frustration and turns away from him. He feels like he’s going out of his skull. He can’t get the words to work right and she won’t let him touch her, and he’s got no bloody idea what he’s supposed to do. This is not going at all the way he’d planned. They should be half naked by now. He retraces their conversation in his head, tries to figure out where it went off course, but Rae’s still fuming and he doesn’t get very far.

“About me?” She asks towards the wall, then spins around to confront him. She looks a bit crazed and he wants to retreat, possibly climb back out the window, but he knows that he’s got to stand his ground and work this out if he wants to keep her. Even if her expression makes a good part of him believe that maybe he doesn’t want to work it out, he knows that it’s just momentary terror at the situation. He loves her, he wants to keep her. He’s just freaked the fuck out at the moment. “Alright, lets talk about me. Do you know what they’re sayin’ about me, Finn? Do you know what they’re callin’ me?”

He looks to the ground for a second, still holding his arms stiffly at his sides. Telling her he knows seems particularly stupid, and will likely only add to the anger that’s practically seeping from her. But feigning ignorance doesn’t seem like the way to go either. He’s not sure what to say, so he just watches her, lets her rail against him. But holy fuck is this frustrating.

“They’re callin’ me ‘Magic Fanny.’” Her voice cracks a bit, and another tear rolls down her cheek. She’s holding her face to the side, only half looking at him. He hurts for her, wishes fervently that there was something he could do to make it better, wishes she’d let him touch her. It might all be better if he could just touch her. “Magic Fanny. Like my vagina must have some kind of special power, because why else would you want to be with me. Like there is no conceivable reason for you to be with me other than my magical vagina!”

“I’m sorry they’re sayin that, Rae. It’s fucked up.” He moves closer to her, hating the distance between them. He holds his hands in front of him and moves slowly, like he’s approaching a wild animal and he’s unsure of his welcome. He scrambles for words, any words, that might make this better. “But you know that’s not true. I… I’ve barely even touched your… vagina…so you know that’s not why I want to be with you.”

Oh God. He can’t believe he just said that. He squeezes his eyes shut and lowers his face to the floor. He’s such an idiot. He’s trying to reassure her, not whine about getting in her pants. And he said the word vagina. He’s never said vagina before in his life. Why does he have to be such a fucking idiot all the time? He scrubs his hands over his face as if he could scrub away his stupidity. But nope. It’s still there. He still just said the word vagina right in the middle of this heavy, messed up conversation.

When he opens his eyes, Rae is looking at him dubiously, and there’s a hint of amusement lightening her features. He heaves a sigh as a heady swell of relief pulses through him. Apparently vagina has released some of the tension between them. His idiocy is good for something after all. He offers a small smile and steps closer, until he can reach out and touch her again. He runs a hand down along her arm and grasps her fingers. She’s quieter now, her muscles looser, but he can still feel the sadness radiating off of her.

“Then why?” Her voice is so soft that he can barely hear it over the sound of the guitars coming from the stereo. It’s soft and gentle and afraid, and he’s reminded that she needs this. “Finn… You’re so… and I’m… I just don’t get why you like me.”

She’s looking at the floor, and he reaches to push back her hair, surprised to discover that it’s damp. He takes in her appearance for the first time, noting her too short pajama pants and the ring of water around the collar of her faded t-shirt. Her clingy, thin, barely covering anything t-shirt. And her obvious lack of bra. He allows himself a brief leer at her chest. Well, less allows than can’t prevent himself from staring. He swallows heavily, bites his lip and shakes his head to loosen the fog of lust that’s descended upon him so suddenly. He has to focus. This is important. He cannot let her beautiful, luscious, majestic breasts derail him from telling her how he feels. Even if he wants to do nothing else in his whole life but bury his face in them. Not right now. He’s got to tell her how he feels, make her feel secure in him, then he might actually have a chance of getting that useless shirt off of her. Just not right now.

He emerges from his lascivious thoughts to find Rae’s eyes tracking his gaze. She flushes and takes a step back to cross her arms across her chest, but Finn moves with her to keep her in touching distance. This is the moment, this is when he’s gonna tell her how he feels and he thinks it might be easier if her skin is underneath his fingertips.

“You asked me that this mornin’ too. Do you really have such a hard time believin’ that I like you, Rae? Isn’t it completely obvious?” She’s frowning, but her eyes look hopeless and lost so he gets closer, rests his palms on her damp shoulders. “I like you because… It’s hard to tell you why I like you because there isn’t anythin’ about you I don’t like.”

He can feel her shoulders slump beneath his touch, and he worries that she thinks this is just a way of putting her off because he can’t name anything. But he’s been running through the reasons endlessly since he left the chippy, and he’s ready to let it all spill out of him. He doesn’t want to fumble this though, doesn’t want it to come out in an incoherent mess like it often does when he talks. So he forces himself to go slow, let her savor it.

“I like you because… because you’re like me. You like the same kind of stuff that I do. You’ve got the second best taste in music of anyone I know.” She raises her eyes to his, and they’re huge and her pupils are wide and she looks hopeful and maybe a little bit relieved. He moves his palm to her cheek, gives her a little half smile, takes a deep breath. There’s so much more to tell her, and if he’s gonna do this, gonna lay it all out, he wants to make sure she knows just how much in her there is to love.

“It’s because you look good in your leather jacket, because you’re so fuckin’ funny all the time. Because you’re always bangin’ on about summat, and no matter what it is, it’s always interestin’.” He grins at her, pauses for a moment to watch her eyes light up as his list goes on. She’s so vulnerable underneath his hands and words just now that it makes something within him loosen intangibly. “It’s because I love to listen to you talk, and because I feel like I can actually talk when I’m with you, because you’ll let me take the time to figure out how to speak without gettin’ impatient. It’s like you understand me, even when I don’t half understand me. I’ve always been shit with speakin’, but with you it’s… it’s easier.” 

It’s hard to relinquish all this, to let go of all these little things he’s been storing away for the last few months. He thinks he’s giving too much away, letting go of any power or control or whatever that he may have had in this relationship and it’s pretty terrifying. What if he tells her all this, lets her know how much he loves her, and she still leaves? He’ll be devastated, back to that angry hollow shell he was before. But her eyes are so different than just a few minutes before, and her cheeks are such a pretty shade of pink and something about the way she’s holding her lips makes him think that maybe he’s not giving up anything after all.

Rae’s mouth parts a little, and it’s almost an invitation for a kiss. She’s uncrossed her arms now, moved a little closer and placed a palm against his chest. He can practically feel her barriers coming down, he can almost feel that the air between them is thinner now, like the world is reshaping to allow them to connect in this moment. He bites his lip against that urge to kiss her, to allow everything else to go unsaid beneath the force of his affection. But it’s like she’s becoming more luminous with every word, like she’s healing a little bit with every syllable and he knows he has to keep going.

“I like you because you’re strong. You had all that stuff, but you came out stronger. I’m in awe of how strong you are.” His voice cracks just a little bit, and he lets himself slowly look over her face, memorize how beautiful she looks in this moment. He studies the angle of her eyebrows, the diameter of her pupils, the rose in her cheeks, the curve of her lips. He runs his thumb over the softness of her skin, and tracks the way she tilts her head into the cup of his hand; his palm is a perfect fit to her cheek, as if she was designed for his touch. She’s so much that it hurts. His chest aches from how much he loves her, how much he wants her to feel how amazing she is. Her eyes are glassy, and he knows she’s trying to hold back tears, so he presses on before the moment is lost.

“I like you because you’re such a good mate, Rae-Rae. You’re loyal and kind and would do anythin’ for the people you care about. I’m so glad to be one of them. And I like you because you don’t take my shit, and you call me out when I’m bein’ a prick.” He laughs a little, watches as a grin plays across her features. She’s breathing a little shallowly, and he finds himself leaning almost imperceptibly closer with every word, as if they’re drawing him closer to her.

“You’re fun, I jus’ like being around ya. And you’re pretty. You’re so pretty, Rae.” He runs his free hand from the crown of her head down to where the tips of her hair rest over her breasts. “I love your hair, and your big brown eyes and all the silly faces you make. And your… your curves. I don’ know if you’ve noticed but I’m pretty obsessed with your tits.”

He scrunches his nose at her for a moment, lets his eyes travel over her and rest on her breasts. She lets out a teary laugh and pulls him into a hug. He holds her tight, lets her rub her face into the crook of his neck, runs his fingers through the fall of hair down her back. He kisses her skin where it’s near his lips, gives into the instinct to show her how he feels with touch. He can feel her smile against his skin. He pulls back to look at her, nuzzles her nose with his and gives her a soft, searching kiss. It’s a kiss that feels new, feels more than the others they’ve shared. This is a kiss where she knows how valuable she is to him.

Finn takes a second to appreciate how things have somehow gotten back on track before continuing.

“So, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell ya earlier. I just… I just needed to figure the words. I like everythin’ about you Rae. I want this, I want you. I don’t care about anythin’ else. I just want you.” He says, and he can feel the thing, the big thing pulsing at the back of his skull. He feels like he’s starting to vibrate with the words, with the need to tell her. This is it. This is the moment.

He kisses her again, a little bit messily this time. He’s trying to keep the words in just a bit longer, hang on to this perfect moment between them before altering it forever. The kiss is soft and gentle but just a bit desperate, and she sighs against his mouth. He pulls back just the tiniest bit, keeps his face close enough to hers that her features are blurred. The pressure of the words builds within him, tightens his muscles and skin and sinews until he’s coiled tight and ready to burst. He cups her cheeks in his palms, shifts his weight on his feet and lets go.

“Rae… Rae, I love you.”

He feels like he’s breathing heavily, like there’s the weight in his chest that he gets after a long run. But both their breaths are quiet, and a thick silence permeates the room. The stereo is still playing, and the sounds of the dishes being done downstairs are audible, but the room is still somehow blanketed in silence. They stand frozen for a long minute, her face between his palms, motionless as the words echo into the room. The stillness is absolute, and Finn forces his brain to stay quiet as long as possible before he starts to freak out.

When the panic hits him, he very nearly sways under its potency. What the fuck did he do? Things were going so well, she was reacting just like he had hoped, and then he had to go and ruin it all with his inability to keep his mouth shut. He is such an idiot. He had almost gotten her back from the ledge, back from breaking up with him, and then he had to go and open his fucking mouth and say the words that were going to send her running. He’s reeling but immobile as the thoughts race through his brain. He’s still too close to see her face as anything more than a blur, and suddenly it’s the most important thing in the world that he see her expression.

He starts to step back, but Rae’s fingers tighten in his shirt.

And he understands. She’s not silent because she’s afraid, she’s silent because she’s processing. She’s silent because the world is reforming around her into one where he loves her. She’s silent because she’s working through and trying to believe.

So he tells her again. And this time, he feels like he can see the air around her altering. It’s no longer still, but swirling and reactive. His words are changing her, changing the world, changing everything.

Rae uses the crumples of his shirt in her fists to pull him closer, and he wraps her up in his arms and holds her together as she lets his love sink into her and settle. He nuzzles her neck, pushes her hair aside to press tiny kisses from her ear to her collarbone. He can feel her hot tears seeping through his shirt, but he somehow knows that they’re good tears. He just tugs her tighter against him, and whispers it into her skin, willing it to seep into the very core of her.

“I love you, Rae. I love you.”

Abruptly, her neck is not beneath his questing lips, and he pulls back dazedly to find out what’s happened. But before he can move, her lips crash into his in a searing kiss, so intense that it’s practically an attack. It takes him a moment to recover, but then he’s kissing her with everything in him, finally able to show her how much he loves her in the way he best knows how. Words are fine and all, but this is what he’s good at. This is where he knows how to best convey what he means. He pours every aching moment of their history into that kiss, relinquishes every hope, offers up every praise he’s ever thought of her.

And as she kisses him back, as she pushes him into stumbling back towards the bed, Finn realizes that she’s trying to tell him all her feelings in that kiss too. She doesn’t have the words either, but he understands her perfectly through the glide of her lips against his, through the press of her tongue and the nibble of her teeth.

Rae loves him too.

Rae giggles a little as they fall backwards into the bed, still caught in a heated kiss, and the sound of it is the best thing he’s ever heard. Who needs Oasis when there’s Rae’s laughter to be heard? They twist together on the bed until they find a comfortable position to resume snogging, but the mood has shifted and it’s no longer frantic and heavy. He strokes her cheek, runs his fingers along her hairline, rises up on his elbow to lean over her. He’s no longer desperate to make her feel his love, now he just wants to linger in it, so when he kisses her again, it’s slow and languid and thoughtful. Rae sighs blissfully and murmurs incoherently against his mouth.

“Hmm?” He moves back so he can watch her eyelids flutter against her cheek. When she opens her eyes, his breath catches in his throat. They’re radiant and glowing with affection. She places her soft hand tenderly against his cheek and smiles at him, and he finds himself blinking back tears. She’s so beautiful. He loves her so much.

“I love you so much.” She whispers, and her words echo his thoughts so closely that he has to blink a few times before he really understands what she’s said. But when he does, his eyebrows draw in with the force of the emotion swelling within him. His chest gets tight and he swallows heavily. She loves him. Rae loves him too. For real. She loves him and she actually said it.

He guesses his plan worked after all.

Finn kisses her again, presses himself against her as best as he can, and wishes he could climb inside her to let her know how he felt. Not in a sex way, he just wishes he could share the inside of his head directly with hers so that she’d never ever have to doubt again. He wishes they could just share one body for a little while because he just wants to keep this connection with her forever. And, okay, he wishes he could climb inside of her in a sex way too. In fact, he’d better shift his hips back a little or she was going to know very intimately how much he wanted her in the sex way.

She rolls on to her side and wraps an arm around his neck, pulling him closer. She aligns her body with his all the way down, presses her breasts against his chest and tilts her hips into his. So much for not poking her with his stiffy. Oh well. He supposes it’s best she know how much he likes her in this way too. He attempts to extricate himself to apologize and move back, but she moans when she feels him, and Finn’s blood boils within him.

“Finn.” She breathes against his lips, and it’s partly a moan and partly a plea and he dives into kissing her with renewed vigor. He tilts her chin up with his hand and suckles and nips at her neck. Her skin is cool at first from her damp hair, but it warms up quickly beneath his ministrations. He rolls his hips against hers as he explores her neck, and his hand comes to rest on her hip, with one finger just beneath the hem of her top. One finger touching the warm soft skin of her hip.

One of Rae’s hands is tangled in his hair, tugging in a way that sends shivers of pleasure coursing down his spine. The other is fisted in his shirt somewhere over his stomach, and he can feel the softer fabric of her thin pajama top against his skin where his shirt’s rucked up. She’s making these noises that are doing his head in, and he worries briefly that he’s going to mess himself before they get much further than this. He wants her so badly, and his fingers are itching to travel further up and explore the hills and valleys of her breasts.

She shifts beside him, and her mouth is back on his, searching and hungry. He groans low in his throat and is distracted enough that his hand ghosts up her side of its own accord. They’re right there, so close, only a few inches away. He wants so much to just slip his hang along her shirt and palm her tits, test the weight of them in his hand, maybe give them a bit of a squeeze. But he worries that if he does, she’ll bolt like she did in the caravan. Maybe she’s got a weird thing about her boobs. He lifts his hand off of her side and flexes it in the air above her. Maybe if he just stretches and clenches it, he’ll be able to keep that hand from going rogue, cause if he leaves it there, it won’t be long before it goes for her tits.

Rae makes a needy sound, a sort of plaintive whine, and he can’t help but grind his hips against her again. Her lips against his are hot and wet and constantly seeking, constantly pressing him further. A red sort of feeling rises up through his torso, and he knows he’s in danger of being lost to the lust he feels for her, close to the point where he gives up all dignity and begs her to please please take her shirt off. He bites her bottom lip and pulls a little, tries to change the pace or the pressure, just something to keep this from becoming too much.

Rae leans back a little, and she’s breathless and her cheeks are flushed and there’s a streak of splotchy redness trailing from behind her ear, down her neck and into the collar of her shirt. When he meets her eyes, her pupils are huge and she looks as dazed and wanting as he feels. He watches her slip her tongue over where his teeth have just been, and his cock jerks inside his jeans. God, what he wants to do to her. With her. She slips her hand down his arm until she’s cupping his hand in hers, and then she slowly… so fucking slowly… places his hand underneath hers on her breast.

He’s still for a moment, not sure that it’s really happening. He’s been thinking about this for months, imagining what he’d do, how he’d touch her, picturing how soft her skin would be, how good the curve of her would feel in his hand. And here he is just lying there staring and doing nothing. He somehow manages to look away from his hand that is actually on her tit for a moment, glancing up quickly to see how she’s reacting. She’s smiling a little mischievous smile, a smug and somewhat… dirty smile. She raises her eyebrow at him, and he grins for a millisecond before he looks back at her glorious chest, at his hands actually touching her glorious chest.

He swears he can actually fucking hear angels singing just then.

He shifts his body so he can put each hand on a breast, lifts them slightly to feel the heft of them. He squeezes gently, flicks his thumb over the tightness of her nipple where he can feel it through her shirt. He runs his finger along the top of them, tracing the curve from one side to the other, tugging down her top a little so he can feel the particular satin of her skin just there. Rae moans softly, and he palms her again and traces the bud of her nipple over and over again as she arches into him. He slips one hand down to the hem of her shirt, and pulls at it a little in question. Will he be allowed to see?

Rae shakes her head, places her hand over his and fixes her shirt. She’s wide-eyed and he thinks maybe a little bit scared underneath the heat that still burns in her eyes. So he kisses her gently, tenderly, and retreatingly. It’s time to stop for now.

“It’s okay, Rae.” He whispers as he shifts to make a little more space between them. He runs a finger over her swollen lips and smiles. “There’s no rush. We’ve got plenty of time.”

She closes her eyes and dips her head, and he marvels at the length of her eyelashes against her cheeks. After a long quiet moment, she looks back up at him and her eyes are shining with something he can’t name just yet. She gives him a soft smile, and they lie there for a while just staring at each other. It’s soppy and he knows it, stupidly romantic to just lie together and stare into each other’s eyes, but he doesn’t really care. There’s so much to see in her eyes.

The last song on the album crescendos, and Finn wonders how it’s possible that he hasn’t even been here long enough for a single CD to play through. He chuckles softly to himself, and Rae raises an eyebrow at him.

“I can’t believe you’re listenin’ to this.”

“Why not?” Rae asks indignantly, sitting up and making a face at him. “This is a top record, you know. Thom Yorke is a genius.”

She stands up and moves towards the stereo, and Finn rises to follow her. He stands behind her as she flicks through CD cases, wraps his arms around her and rests his chin on her shoulder.

“Oh, I know. I’ve just been wantin’ to listen to it all day.”

“Do you want me to play it again?”

“Nah, it’s alright. Actually,” Finn lets go of her and reaches over to root through the pockets of the jacket he’d discarded after he’d come in. “I brought this. Thought you might wanna give it a go.”

He shrugs and shuffles his feet. It’s a mixtape he made for her last week while she was missing. It’s stupid, he knows, but he makes her mixes when he’s missing her. And he’s missed her a lot since college started up and she practically disappeared. He’s a little embarrassed to give it to her, usually he just keeps them in a drawer, but he’d grabbed it without too much thought as he’d left his house earlier.

“You brought a mixtape to come talk to me?” Rae grins, and Finn feels his cheeks warm. “How exactly did you expect our talk to go?”

“Just put it in, will ya?” He grumbles, and flops himself down onto the floor with his head on her beanbag chair.

She laughs as she puts the tape in, and the sound rings through the room in the absence of music. He feels the familiar frustration of being so much more into her than she is with him, but he reminds himself that she loves him and he loves her, and he doesn’t have to do this anymore. He’s gonna have words and tell her and she’ll love him back and it’s different now.

Rae crosses the room and lies down beside him, and he shifts himself so his legs rest over hers just like they did that day at Rutlands. It was such a ridiculous and frankly uncomfortable thing to do that he was sure then that he was giving it all away. How could she not know he fancied her, when he took every possible chance to touch her, even in the stupidest way possible? He laughs at himself, at all the missed chances when they could’ve come together if he wasn’t such an idiot.

“So…” Rae says, turning her head to smile sneakily at him. “I never did get to give you those personal hygiene tips.”

————————————

The gutter is equally as horrible on the way down. Actually, it’s quite possible that it’s worse, since its cold and wet from the morning dew. His jeans are getting damp from the condensation as he clamps his thighs tight around the icy metal and leans across to press one last kiss to Rae’s lips as she leans out the window. He’s got one hand on the gutter, and it slides down a couple of inches and forces him to break the kiss. Rae laughs quietly as he scrambles to get a grip on the pole, and he scowls at her for a moment before his good mood spoils the effect.

“See ya later, Finnley.” She says breezily, a smirk gracing her slightly puffy lips.

Finn shakes his head and rolls his eyes, returning his focus to climbing down the side of the house. The trip down the gutter is definitely worse, but it doesn’t faze him at all. He’s absurdly cheerful, and nothing short of a broken limb is going to ruin his good mood today. What are bruised balls in the face of true love? He snorts at his own foolishness. He’s all romantical today, and he fears it might just stay that way forever. She makes him senseless.

He grins as his feet touch the ground, pats the gutter fondly before slipping across Rae’s front lawn. His idea to climb in her window had turned out pretty good, and he congratulates himself on successfully sneaking into his girlfriend’s room and spending the night.

They hadn’t done anything. And, though Finn’s blood still burns for her and he knows he is going home to wank yet again, he’s glad that it had stayed innocent. It had been a perfect night. They’d laid on the floor for a long time listening to the mixtape he’d made, and Rae’d scored every song for him. He’d averaged about a 6, but that was mostly because she liked to mug him off. They talked about music, and college and their friends for hours until they’d nodded off right there on the floor. His neck ached this morning, but it was worth it. He’d held her hand and touched her hair and wrote messages on her thigh. And for those few glorious minutes on her bed, he’d finally gotten to touch her tits.

Perfect.

They’d woken up just as the first rays of sunlight had broken through the sky, and Rae’d giggled as she told him he’d have to go back out the window so her mum wouldn’t find out he’d been there. He’d been dubious about it, but she’d kissed him and whispered please, so back down the gutter he went.

Something told him that he and that gutter would be getting much better acquainted. Next time he’d bring a screwdriver.


	3. Epilogue

“Well, well, well! If it ain’t Mr. Long Term Commitment!” Finn stood as he saw his best mate enter the chippy and gave him a silly bow.

Archie gave a half-hearted chuckle as he strode across the room and embraced his friend. Finn clapped him on the back good-naturedly, then pulled back to look at Archie. It’d been a couple of months since he’d seen his friend, and Finn examined him carefully for alterations. They were subtle, but they were there; Archie’s hair was just a fraction shorter, he’d replaced his old blue and gray striped shirt for a newer one in a similar pattern, and his eyes were pinched behind the barrier of his glasses. Finn tracked these small changes in Archie every time he came home, tried to keep up with the ways that the city was altering him.

“It’s good to see you, mate. It feels like a long time this time.” Finn smiled crookedly as he sat, and watched as Archie folded his lanky form into the small chair. Archie’d shot up an additional two inches that last year of college, and was now too tall to fit comfortably in the seats at this old place.

“I know what you mean.” Archie slid out of his jacket and readjusted his glasses. Finn was pleased to note that at least that hadn’t changed, it was exactly the same gesture that he’d been doing since he was eight and got his first bulky set of frames. “It’s only been since early September, but so much has happened that it feels like longer.”

Finn nodded and looked down at the table, feeling that familiar ache in his chest when he thought about the changes that had shaken them to the core over the last months. It’d been tough to get through it all, but it felt like life was back in the upswing again finally. He closed his eyes against the memories before looking back up at Archie’s slumped shoulders and despondent expression.

“Yeah, but it’s not all bad, right? You and Pascal are pretty hot and heavy nowadays.” Finn waggled his eyebrows and leered across the table, trying to elicit a laugh from Archie. “You asked him, didn’t ya? How’d that go?”

Finn’s brow furrowed as Archie heaved a weary sigh and shook his head sadly.

“Not good. It was… it was so not good. I don’t even know what to do about it, mate. He was…” Archie shook his head, mouth working even though the words weren’t coming out, and Finn tilted his head in sympathy as he watched his heartsick mate fumble for understanding.

“What happened, Arch? I thought you had a whole plan?” Finn asked, leaning back as the waitress appeared with a tray of food. Finn gave her a wide, flirty smile and chuckled as her eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed. It was one of his great pleasures in life to flirt with silly young things and watch them fumble around afterwards. “Ta, love.”

Archie raised an eyebrow at him as the waitress went back behind the counter and began to whisper loudly to a friend, and Finn laughed and shrugged. It was harmless, really. He never let it come to anything, but it was nice to know that he’d only grown better looking in the half dozen years since college. He’d been good with the girls back then, through brooding mostly, but he’d never been much of a flirt until the last year or two. Nowadays he was incorrigible about it, he took great pleasure at sending the birds all a twitter.

“So, tell me what happened.” Finn nudged as he divvied out the chips, burgers and beers. Archie looked down at the food for a long minute as he gathered his resolve, took a swig of his beer.

“Well, so I planned out this romantic dinner, right? I told you about that. I set to cooking paella, since Pascal loves paella, but what I didn’t count on was that paella is kind of difficult to make if you don’t have the right kind of pan and I ended up over-salting it and it was basically inedible. But he’s cool about stuff like that, he just thought it was funny and we ended up ordering take away, but I got all flustered about it, and you know how that goes.” Archie fiddled with the chips in his basket as he spoke, shoving the food around, and Finn watched his face soften as he spoke about his boyfriend.

Archie had met Pascal at a lecture on Napoleonic architecture early that spring, and fallen head over heels in love with the Spaniard almost instantly. The relationship was fraught with drama and conflict at the start as Pascal had VISA issues and a tendency for wandering eyes, but when he’d returned to London after the summer apart, things had smoothed out considerably. Finn had mixed feelings on Pascal, who was funny and lively and handsome, but had hurt Archie terribly with his infidelity in the early months of their relationship. And something about him was just too slick, too charming for Finn’s liking. Pascal certainly wasn’t good enough for Archie, but Archie was absolutely smitten with him and Finn was pleased to see the changes in his best mate this fall. Archie had come alive once the relationship was more settled, he was more secure in himself than he’d ever been before and was pursuing grants and fellowships that he’d been too afraid to go after last year. Finn was willing to admit, however begrudgingly, that dating Pascal had been beneficial for Archie. And now Archie was asking Pascal to move in with him.

Finn had been lectured numerous times on being supportive to his best mate, so he frequently bit his tongue against his reservations and reminded himself of what it was like to be in love like that. He focused on the ways Archie smiled goofily whenever someone mentioned Pascal, on the glow in his cheeks when they were together, on the excitement in his voice over the phone when he rushed through his plans for upcoming dates. Finn found himself warming to Pascal significantly when he focused on seeing him through Archie’s eyes. But it was quite the endeavor to see the smarmy bastard who’d cheated on his best mate and sent him drunk and sobbing to Finn’s doorstep at two a.m. on multiple occasions in a more positive light. Archie loved him, so Finn had to love him too. No matter how much he also distrusted him.

“So, you got all worked up and bungled it? I doubt Pascal cared that you tripped over words, Arch.” Finn cocked an eyebrow at Archie, laughed under his breath. Archie was still so nervous with Pascal, it was comical how frequently he turned to Finn for advice. Clueless, bumbling Finn was now the source of relationship advice.

“Well, it’s not that exactly. We were having dinner and I mentioned that my lease was ending and I thought it might be nice to look for a bigger place, but I was all flustered about dinner and I forgot to tell him I wanted a bigger place so that we could live together.” Archie rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “So, he just started saying that I ought to just stay in my flat, since it was so close to uni. And I got upset and hurt, thinking that he didn’t want to move in together, and I started sort of yelling at him about where the relationship is going.”

Finn winced, looking on in sympathy as Archie rubbed at the furrow of his eyebrows with his long fingers. Archie put an elbow on the table and rested his forehead in his hand as he continued.

“And then he started yelling about how I don’t trust him, and where do I want things to go if I can’t trust him, and how he’s been completely committed since he came back and can’t I see that, and maybe I’m the one who’s not committed. It was mess.”

Finn clucked his cheek and took a gulp of his beer. Yikes. Archie and Pascal were prone to these kind of heated misunderstandings, which was another reason Finn was less than keen on Pascal. Archie seemed to do a lot of agonized retelling of their fights, and Finn felt bad that his best mate was so conflicted and distraught all the time. Every little disagreement turned into a huge argument, but Archie was quick to impart how every argument led to a lot of fervent making up. Finn was sure he’d find that kind of overzealous passion exhausting, but Archie seemed to enjoy it.

“Yeah, that’s not good mate. Did you guys make up before you left this mornin’?” Finn glanced up at the window, then returned his gaze to Archie’s drooping face. Archie ate a few chips, took a sip of his beer and shrugged.

“Not really. He left not long afterwards, and I spent the night crying on the couch. What should I do mate? I don’t understand why he always has to assume that everything I say is because I don’t trust him. He’s always throwing it in my face that I don’t trust him, but he cheated on me! It’s his own fault he did that, and I do trust him anyways! I never even said anything to the effect that I didn’t. It’s like every fight we have ends up being about that, no matter what it starts out as. And I haven’t even mentioned the cheating in months!”

Archie slumped in his chair, having worked himself into a fine dejection. Finn scowled a bit down at the table, huffed out a long breath and considered his next words. It was a tough subject, and he’d seen up close and personal how cheating could explode inside of a relationship and utterly decimate it. It was different for Archie and Pascal, since it had been so early, and they’d worked so hard to overcome it. Archie’d gone to therapy for a while, at Rae’s suggestion, to be able to forgive Pascal and Finn knew he fought hard against mentioning it anymore. But the effects were long-reaching, and even now they couldn’t escape it.

Finn thought about his own relationship experience, thought about the ways he’d had to work at it all the time. He thought about the constant effort that went into maintaining it, how he’d had to stretch himself to improve and grow so that he could deepen it. He thought of the sleepless nights spent agonizing over the terrible true words he’d wielded as weapons during fights. About the times he’d stormed off to wallow over his own wounded ego, the times he’d disappeared without a word for days on end. He thought about how badly it had hurt when he thought it was over.

And then he thought about the afternoons spent puttering around their tiny flat together, about the way the sheets always smelled like lavender because of the shampoo she’d used. He thought about the way her skin was impossibly softer first thing in the morning, about coming home late to find her asleep on the couch with the kettle still warm. He thought about all the ways that living with someone was worth the hardship and the hassle, and how loving someone made all the difficulties somehow less difficult.

When he raised his head again, Finn found himself smiling.

“Do ya love him, Archer?” He asked, already knowing the answer. Archie raised his anguished eyes to Finn’s face and stared at him with lips pursed. He nodded sharply, once. “Do ya want to live with him, spend ya life with him?”

Archie poked absently at the full basket of chips in front of him, tilted his head as he considered. After a moment, he frowned and shook his head.

“Ya know I do, you smug twat. You don’t always have to be so self-satisfied, you know.” Finn laughed aloud and Archie wrinkled his nose in fake disgust.

“Then call him, Arch. Apologize. Tell him what you were really meaning to say. If you’re going to make a real go of it with Pascal, you’d better practice apologizing. Relationships seem to require a lot of saying you were wrong.” Archie balled his fist and pressed his cheek heavily into in, pouting and glaring at Finn over his glasses.

The bell over the front door chimed, and Finn looked up with a grin at the streak of dark hair and flannel that entered the chippy. Archie had just opened his mouth to reply when she reached the table.

“Here.” Rae plunked the baby into Finn’s arms and departed into the back, and Finn vaguely noted that she’d startled Archie with her abrupt appearance. He smiled adoringly down at the tiny person in his lap, bending his head to kiss her cheek and nuzzle her neck. Lucy’s giggle was bright and luminous in the shop, like she made whatever space she was in effortlessly brighter. 

“Hi there, chicken.” He grinned at her, and she reached to touch his face and poke him in the eye. “Did you have fun with Mummy?”

“Look at how big she’s gotten!” Archie exclaimed, holding out his arms. Finn kissed her one more time and then passed her over the table to him. “Hello there, Lucy! Come see Uncle Archie.”

Finn looked on with pride as Archie sat Lucy on the table in front of him with one of his big hands spanning across her back where he held her under the armpit. She wriggled and cooed in delight as she flailed her arms in hopes of grabbing his glasses.

“Beautiful girl!” Archie cooed, too busy making silly faces at Lucy to remember his grumpiness from moments earlier. “Beautiful Lucy, so big now, eh? You’re such a big girl!”

“One and a half stone already.” He looked around behind him once, then returned to watching the baby scramble to get Archie’s glasses. “And, she’s gotten her bottom teeth in now.”

Finn reached across the table to pull Lucy’s lower lip down and show off her brand new teeth. She turned her head at his touch, twisting to gift him with a big slobbery smile. Finn grinned back, moving his finger from her mouth to her tiny fist. Lucy blew a big raspberry at him, and both men laughed.

“Ok, sorry.” Rae appeared from the back and pulled the heavy diaper bag over her shoulder as she dropped into the seat next to him, leaning over to press a quick kiss against his cheek. “I had to pee so bad I thought I might explode. Izzy took forever to choose furniture. We were just at the charity shop, so there wasn’t even much to choose from, but you woulda thought it were the palace or summat with the way she were debating. What’d I miss?”

Finn smiled down at the table, he seemed to do an awful lot of smiling these days. His daughter was just a grin topped with a shock of black hair, and he spent an absurd amount of time just looking at her in wonder. And Rae seemed more beautiful than ever, motherhood made her glow in a way nothing else had before. Sometimes he got tears in his eyes just from looking at his girls.

“Finn here was just telling me that relationships mean saying you’re sorry all the time, right Finn?” Archie said, leaning around the baby to give him a smug smirk. Finn sneered in reply, then turned to Rae to explain, but found her laughing silently.

“Damn right! I’d think you’d be used to it by now, Finnley.”Rae teased, reaching across the table to tug at the back of Lucy ’s nappy. She wrinkled her face for a moment, then smiled up at Archie, who’d returned to cooing at the baby. “You’re looking well, Archer. Is that a new shirt?”

“It is, thanks Rae. How’s Izzy? Any better?”

“A bit better, I think.”Rae huffed a sigh and shrugged a bit. “It’s hard to tell, but she’s stopped bursting into tears every time anyone mentions Chop’s name. So that’s good. And she found a little flat for her and Tommy, so they moved out last week, thank God. I love them both to death, but it’s been good to have them out of our house.”

Finn shifted a bit so he could lean his arm across the back of her chair in a silent show of support. He loved Izzy like a sister, but the five of them didn’t fit very well in their snug little house. He was grateful that they’d had room for her when she needed someplace to go, but he was equally grateful that she’d found a new place. Lucy had only been sleeping through the night for a few weeks when Izzy and Tommy had moved in, and moving into their bedroom had set her back. It was a relief to move her back to her own room and have a little privacy again. Rae leaned back into his touch and smiled over at Lucy, who was wiggling in a way that suggested she was trying to fight off her sleepiness.

“And Chop?” Archie asked tentatively, and Finn balled his fist underneath the table. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to forgive Chop for what he’d done. The fucker.

“We haven’t talked to him. He tried to come around a lot, at first, but he’s given up now, I think.” Rae shook her head sadly, and an uncomfortable silence came over them.

It had been nine weeks since they’d discovered Chop’s infidelity. They’d all known that he liked to go down to the strip club from time to time, Finn had even gone with him once or twice. But they hadn’t known that he’d been paying to have sex with strippers for the last year. And they hadn’t known that he’d gotten Chlamydia from somewhere and passed it on to Izzy until she’d gotten a red flag in a routine medical examination. That’s when it had all blown up- their marriage, their family, their life. Rae’d been quick to take in Izzy and little Tommy, and they’d done what they could to help their friend to get through this difficult time.

After a moment, Rae cleared her throat and tried to change the subject. “How’d it go with Pascal last night? Did you ask him?”

Archie groaned and gave an exaggerated frown to Lucy, who managed to grab a hold of his bottom lip. “Don’t ask.” He mumbled around her hand.

“It didn’t go too well. He forgot to do the actual asking, and they had a fight instead.” Finn lifted half his mouth as he explained Archie’s fumble to Rae, and she laughed before shooting their friend a sympathetic frown.

“What do you mean, forgot to do the actual asking?” Lucy twisted around in Archie’s arms to lurch towards her mum. Rae sighed as she pulled her across the table and into her lap, but kissed the top of Lucy’s head as the baby settled in and pulled at a lock of Rae’s hair.

Finn smiled fondly at the two of them, feeling warm as he watched his daughter snuggle into Rae’s arms sleepily. She was Rae’s double in most ways- dark hair, big eyes, rosy pink lips, perfect button nose. She was silly and stubborn like Rae, too. Lucy was the best thing that he’d ever seen, and Rae was the second best, so the sight of the two of them cuddled together made him ache pleasantly.

“I told him that I wanted to look for a bigger place, but I may have neglected to mention that I meant a better place for us to live in together.” Archie laughed ruefully, and Finn noted that his story was far less whinging when he told it to Rae.

“Oh, Archie!” Rae exclaimed, her laughter deliberately soft as the baby started to doze off against her chest. Finn briefly envied his daughter both the nap and the pillow. “And then he probably said that you should just keep the flat you have, and then you got upset because you thought he didn’t want to move in with you, right?”

“How’d you know that?” Archie’s voice was full of awe, and Finn laughed loudly, earning him a warning look from Rae when Lucy startled.

“Sorry, baby.” Finn reached over to smooth down Lucy’s hair soothingly, then gave Rae’s cheek a fleeting touch.

“Seriously, Rae. How’d you know?” Archie asked again, and Rae gave Finn a conspiratory smirk, to which he rolled his eyes. She always thought she knew everything, and it was one of the great irritants of his life. Of course, she usually did know everything, so that just made it worse

“Cause Finn did the same thing when we first moved in together. Don’t you remember, Finn?” Rae turned her huge brown eyes to his and he stubbornly shook his head. He remembered, but he didn’t want to let her be right again. She scowled and raised an interrogative eyebrow at him, and Finn shrugged in capitulation.

“You never told me that!” Archie exclaimed, and Finn flushed as they both turned inquisitive eyes to him. He shrugged again. There was no way he was telling this story. He had absolutely no desire to relive his idiocy, and even if he did start telling it, Rae’d just take over the tale halfway through anyway. Rae made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, and Finn looked down at Lucy, allowing Rae’s words to flow over him as he watched, mesmerized, as Lucy’s eyelashes fluttered in her sleep.

“When he first tried to ask me to move in with him, he got so nervous that he just started goin’ on about how shitty his flat was and how he wanted to get a bigger place but couldn’t afford one. I got a little offended, cause I picked out that first flat, remember love?” Rae looked to him, and he nodded. It was a familiar routine, he was often called upon to remember something in whatever story she was telling. “So I told him he was lucky to have that place and that he should stay there for a while. I couldn’t figure out why he got so angry and picked a fight, but he disappeared for a few days and when he came back he asked me why I didn’t want to move in with him, if I didn’t think we were going to stay together. I was so mad at him, I remember that part good and well, and we yelled at each other for a bit until we got it sorted. And then we moved into that little place off of Chester Street.”

Rae chuckled softly, and Finn grinned as he guessed at the path her mind was taking. They’d made love absolutely constantly in their first place together. They’d only lived there six months or so, and his memories of that place were little more than the way the light from the tiny window reflected off her bare skin, and the particular coarseness of the carpet in the lounge. That and the scent of curry from the little Thai place across the street. The smell of curry still makes him horny.

“So you just made up, that’s it?” Archie asked, and Finn grinned at the expression on his face- half horrified, half longing.

“Well, we screamed at each other for a bit first, but yeah.” Rae chuckled, absently rocking with the baby in her arms. She examined Archie for along minute. “You love him, don’t you Archie? You want to be with him?”

“God, you two are insufferable.” Archie rolled his eyes and slumped back in his seat. “How can you be just as disgustingly in love now as you were in college? It’s quite revolting. You could at least make a show of not having it all figured out for the rest of us, yeah?”

“I said the same thing.” Finn told Rae when she turned quizzical eyes to him, confused at Archie’s vitriol. She smiled tenderly at his reply, and Finn leaned over to kiss her gently. He stroked Lucy’s head again as he pulled back, and he had a moment where he could envision the beautiful picture the three of them made all nestled together like that. Sitting across the table from Archie, like an exhibition at a game show. This is what love has wrought, it can be yours too for the low low price of an apology!

“Just call him and explain, Arch.” Rae demanded gently, as if she too were aware of what an example the three of them were just then. “Don’t leave him wondering if you want to be with him all week. The fight will be twice as bad when you get back if you leave it now. I know that from experience. You love him, you want to live with him, just tell him!”

Both men stared at Rae in wonder for a moment. It was the same thing Finn had said only a few minutes before, but the way she said it made it somehow different. Rae was amazing. She had a way of cutting to the quick of things, of making everything absurdly clear. Like love wasn’t a mystery, but a logical set of instructions you could follow that would lead you to the desired result. Finn shook his head to clear it, reached to take a drink of his now warm beer. Archie chuckled lowly.

“You’re right. Of course you’re right, you always are.” Finn winced at Archie’s words, the last thing he needed was Rae’s head getting even more inflated about her stupidly high percentage of getting things right. She’d be nearly unmanageable if he kept it up. “Thank you, Rae. I’ll call him.”

“Oi! What about me?” He demanded, affronted that she was going to get all the credit for the advice Finn had given before she’d even gotten there. “I said the same fuckin’ thing!”

“Thank you, Finn.” Archie said deliberately, like he was talking to an obstinate child. Finn scowled and Rae’s trill of laughter rang through the chippy. Finn turned his body towards her at the sound, still frowning, but bubbling with happiness the way he always did when she laughed.

“Well, go on then!” Rae commanded, shooing Archie out with the hand that wasn’t supporting Lucy’s sleeping form. “Go call him! And I’ll expect you ‘round ours tonight for dinner. Izzy’s bringing Tommy, and Chloe said she and Jonathan will stop by. The whole gang will be there. Well, except…”

Rae trailed off sadly, and Finn rubbed her shoulder. So many people had been hurt by Chop’s actions, including Rae. He ought to go over there and show Chop what’s what. He deserved it. Archie smiled sadly as he rose to his feet.

“Thanks, guys. What would I do without you?” Archie asked, coming around the table to give Rae a one armed hug over her shoulder and a kiss on the cheek. He touched Lucy’s head fondly, then cuffed Finn’s shoulder and swatted the back of his head.

“Oh, die a miserable and lonely death, most likely.” Rae replied breezily as he started for the door. “See you around six, Archie!”

Finn tugged her a little closer with the arm around her shoulder, and they both smiled down at their sleeping child for a minute.

“So, you’re cooking tonight then, girl?” Finn asked jokingly as he picked up his neglected burger and tucked in.

“You wish. I thought we’d order takeaway. I’ve been craving curry.” Rae tilted her head as she grinned lasciviously at him, and he choked on his food as he chortled.


End file.
